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Kristen Crowell plays on a co-ed football team and watches 10 or 12 hours of football every weekend, but when she tried to jump into the world of fantasy football leagues, she was greeted with a no-women-allowed sign.

"My comment at the time was I could . . . belch just like the rest of them," the 32-year-old Waukesha resident recalled. "But they told me I couldn't (join) because I was a girl."

Now that she's found a couple of male-dominated leagues of the virtual games that she could join, she's holding her own and determined to go to the top.

Showing up men isn't necessarily their motivation, but many women are passionate about playing fantasy football, a game that puts you in the position of "owning" your own National Football League team.

It's fantasy in that you draft players from throughout the NFL to form your team. Then you decide which of your team members will play in a given week. Your team scores points based on how those players perform - touchdowns, yards gained, etc. - in actual NFL games.

Fantasy games are played in various sports, but the 14.7 million Americans who play fantasy football make it the most popular fantasy sport, according to a July survey done for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

About 6% to 10% of those fantasy football players are women, estimated Jeff Thomas of Kenosha, the association president and founder of SportsBuff.com.

Fantasy sports are appealing to fans because the gaming gives them a greater stake in sports they already love, said Erica Halverson, a fantasy football player who has made fantasy baseball part of her research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"It's kind of an intellectual fandom," said Halverson, an assistant professor of educational psychology who won the first fantasy football league she played in.

On one level, fantasy players become more invested in football because they care about players on many different NFL teams, not just their hometown team, Halverson said.

Then there's the strategic and competitive element - an owner can pick and manage the best fantasy team, she said.

"It's closer to the stock market than it is to a video game," Halverson said. "I think that mixture is just really tantalizing to people."

Gloria Strehlow, 48, a kindergarten teacher who lives in Brookfield, has been playing fantasy football for more than a decade. A group of her late husband's friends invited her to join their league shortly after he passed away.

Strehlow, who studies players and their statistics for six or seven hours before her league's draft, and studies at least an hour a week during the season, won the league in her third or fourth season. She said the men weren't bothered so much about being bested by a woman.

"It was probably worse that I was a (Chicago) Bears fan," she said.

Other women enjoy playing in women-only leagues. There's a 10-team league that includes nine Washington County social workers and a six-team Milwaukee-area league that includes four sisters.

Heather Hochrein, one of the social workers, says fantasy football is something she can enjoy with her husband, Jeff, even though he plays in an all-men league.

Gotta have Favre

Besides a passion for football, they both chose Brett Favre to be one of the quarterbacks on their fantasy teams.

"How can you be a Packer fan and not pick Brett?" Heather Hochrein said.

Maggie Vercoe, one of the sisters, is like many fantasy football players in that her interest in football dates to childhood, when she began playing various sports and enjoyed watching the Packers on TV.

The 34-year-old Whitefish Bay resident, who works for a computer software firm, said besides the competitiveness of fantasy football, she likes the fact that it makes her a little more well-rounded.